HELL Collection

The HELL Collection

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Hell is compelling because we all live in it. We are transfixed by the demons of Hell because they are our demons and in Townley’s extraordinary new collection we face the raw, red energy of Hell with an intensity that no other contemporary artist can unleash. These paintings overwhelm us with their deep, jagged contours and howling faces sunk in oceans of colour. These faces are never whole: they rage and fight and struggle to survive. Life-sized figures protrude form the canvas, their features overwhelmed and broken into fragments.

The Fate of these figures is uncertain. Will they claw their way through Hell or be devoured? This question, more than any other, dominates the psychological landscape of Townley’s work and in Hell it finds its most ferocious expression to date. Faces and bodies, twisting and breaking, are like the fragments of a life driving on against impossible odds. This journey through Hell is one we must all make. Only those with extraordinary courage, persistence and a willingness to embrace the demons they encounter, will emerge stronger, burning with an energy that few can make their own. These few are the Icons, the world’s most creative and powerful people, whose capacity to survive and succeed where others are consumed, is a recurring theme of Townley’s work.

Townley’s Hell is not a place of loss, destruction and desperation. It is a blood red sea laced with hope that we might emerge from the depths with knowledge, power and wisdom and out of that molten furnace we might forge a life of immense creativity.